Tips for House of Grief Battle
What worked for me was to get everyone back into the corridor we came from, causing the stairs and doorway to be a choke point. Then I cast hunger of hadar on that area, forcing them all to try to push through it. I did not worry about trying to attack on the first turn, just tried to GTFO of the open room. Teleport spells like misty step are a big help with that.
The darkness they would cast was still a PITA, but I focused as much as possible on attacking whoever cast darkness, because it is a concentration spell. If they lose concentration (or just die) the darkness goes away.
I still had to play it several times. There are so many enemies, you need some good initiative rolls in order to not get swarmed before you even have a chance to do anything.
I used Karlach, Lae, SHart, and a custom sorc on tactician.
Just ran off to the side so they all had to funnel up around two pillars, and cast insect swarm on both ways ‘in’ (both my sorc and SHart had it). It slows, has HUGE range, and doesn’t proc their ‘reflect holy dmg’ BS aura. The pillars make LOS’ing their casters easy, the darkness doesn’t really affect you once the AOE is up. Most of the fight was just Karlach throwing anyone that made it through the AOE back into it, and my two casters hugging pillars so they didn’t lose concentration.
Personally I run a bunch of AoE damag dealer (shadowheart as light cleric, my avatar as storm sorc/tempest cleric/evocation wizard, jaheira as throwing barbarian with nyrulyna, then gale as evocation wizard focusing on frost damage). The trash mob is cleared really fast and the tough mob I just hold person.
In other run where I have less AoE, I use a bunch of summons as meat shield (necromancy of thay ghouls, elementals, etc.)
This fight was insanely hard until I figured out a strategy that made it incredibly easy.
Once the fight starts, immediately pull your entire party to the very top of the stairs. This creates a perfect chokepoint and all the enemies will funnel into it. Cast a wide Wall of Fire across the bottom of the steps, AoE the crap out of that area, and just keep smacking everyone on the stairs as they come.
Well, I used a combination of myself (paladin) with Gale, Jahira, and ofc Shadowheart.
Sanctuary on SH herself so she avoids getting wolfed on.
Hasted Gale and Jaheira ice storming the crap outta the two enemy clusters
My pally on the boss lady to distract her
At most there’s one moron casting Darkness, but if you’ve got someone who’s immune to blind, kill em.
In a recent coop game I’ve been playing a throwmancer. We dimension door’ed to the top of the stairs and pulled back a little so they’d all gather at the bottom.
Then I threw the runebomb at them 😀
10/10 results, would throw a runebomb again.
fr though, it can be an annoying fight. There’s a ton of them and they love darkness + bonechill. Best strats are what you’ve mentioned; pull way back so they can’t see/target you and deal from there.
Another time as sorc I used twinspell chain lightning- was perfect for that situation.